Category: Bugs

As part of the Sage 200c release last summer, Sage announced their intention to release more regular feature updates, rather than Annual releases followed by multiple service packs.

Following up the successful summer release, which saw the much requested features such as an Invoicing Module and Hiding Customer/Supplier accounts, this week saw the release of the Sage 200c Winter 2017 Enhancement.

This release introduces the meaning of ‘c’ in Sage 200c and that is Connected (not cloud!!!)

There are further enhancements to the Sage Bank Feeds function, with the introduction of ‘Rules’. So if there are common transactions which are not picked up until the point of bank reconciliation you can set rules so the Bank feeds will post these automatically, instead of you having to manually identify and enter them.

There are further improvements to Office 365 integration, with Sage contact. This is in the form of an App/plugin for Office 365 which allows users to view key account information from within Outlook. This includes Balance, Credit Limit, recent transactions, memo’s. My personal opinion is “the jury’s out” on this one. It sounds great, but in reality I am not sure how much it will be used. Possibly the key is how much further Sage take it for future phases of development.

Document storage functionality has been introduced to effectively allow the automated archive of a document, as a .PDF, to a specified location at the point of it being Printed or Emailed. The storage location can be a designated place on the server or, further connecting to Office 365, One Drive. The negative for this is that Sage haven’t made it available to ALL layout types. In particular, it isn’t available for Remittance Advices (which I would have hoped for as there is no re-print option for these).

Budget functionality has seen more enhancements, following on from the summer release. You are now able to specify an Original budget and a Revised budget.

Checks are available within POP Authorisation to ensure the budget is not breached without permission. Validation reports are available if an authoriser decides not to authorise (although the standard ones will need some tweaking to add more detail such as the Item details).

There are a number of fixes as part of this release, these are detailed on the Sage website, follow the link below.

One key issue that impacted users in Sage 200 2016 were the restrictions on Accounts which were placed ‘On Hold’.

There is an issue with entering Memo’s and also it is not possible to allocate transactions.

SP2 fixed the Memo issue. It didn’t fix the allocations but after I did some communicating with Sage support they did a great job and there is actually a Hotfix now available.

It still isn’t possible to import transactions which is something else we have come up against, however my opinion on this is that for Invoices in particular it is probably working by design. I would be interested to know other people’s thoughts on this.

Sage 200 Extra and Sage 200 Extra Online 2016 have now been released. If you are considering updating or want further information send your details to sagemarketing@smithcooper.co.uk

Whilst it is not, perhaps, as drastic an update as the 2015 version, which had a whole change to the UI amongst other features. The 2016 version has some game changing additions with new integrations for payments.

There are also some nice additions from the wish lists and a new connector which integrates Sage 200 to stand alone Sage CRM (not Sage 200 CRM).

Below are some details of what’s new!

Sage Integrated Payments (SIPS)

Integration with Sage Payments allows for an easier and secure way to pay suppliers.

A Sage Payments account is a virtual wallet (e-wallet) similar to PayPal. You can add funds to your Sage Payments account and then use this to make payments directly from Sage 200.

NB. A Sage Payments account is required

Bank Feeds

Sage 200 is now able to use the Yodlee bank feed. This gathers information from your bank, and downloads bank transaction details for display in Sage 200 so you can match them to transactions in Sage 200, or create new transactions.

When you confirm the transactions as matched they are flagged ready for your next bank reconciliation.

NB. Subscription to Bank feeds is required.

Sage Pay – Get Paid Faster

Sage 200 now includes the Sage Pay ‘Get Paid Faster’ functionality.

If you are using Sage Pay, you can use the ‘Pay Now’ button on your layouts such as invoices, statements and chase letters that you send as PDF files by email.

When your customer opens the PDF attachment they can click the ‘Pay Now’ button to make a payment straight away through Sage Pay.

Commitment reporting

Commitment reporting allows you report on purchase orders as a committed cost before the order has been received or invoiced.

This makes it easier to view actual costs and committed costs to establish committed spend.

Report Category budget grouping

It is now possible to hold a budget against a reporting category which offers much more flexibility in assigning and reporting on budget areas.

New Bank Reconciliation screen

A new bank reconciliation screen has been introduced with a split screen view separating matched and unmatched transactions. This brings the functionality in line with that of Sage 50 and presents the information in a clearer way.

Create Return from Order

The ability to create a Sales Return from an existing Sales Order has been eagerly awaited for many versions gone by. It’s finally happened!

You can select a Sales Order then select ‘New Return from order’ which will populate the Return details.

Within the Sales Return screen you can also select Copy Order and the Return screen will be populated with the return data based on the selected Sales Order.

It makes it much quicker to enter a return and removes the need to re-key information but be aware there is no link created, it just copies the information.

Predictive text in Rapid Order Entry

On the Rapid Order Entry, predictive text is now available to filter the selection list of available stock items as the item is typed.

Override Negative Stock option (Rapid Order Entry)

When raising a Sales Order via Rapid Order Entry, it is now possible allow the stock to go in to a negative allocation if the required quantity is not available.

The Product Group now has a flag ‘Can over allocate stock’.

Stock Analysis Codes

Stock records have been extended to include 20 Analysis Codes. Report Categories still exist, but the analysis codes allow for further analysis in line with SOP/POP/ It is also possible to import these when importing item records.

Support for Barcodes

Stock records have been extended to include a Barcode. These can be imported as part of the Stock Item Import.

Limited Price Bands

My particular favourite!

New Price Bands can be created as ‘Limited’, allowing the customer to select which Stock items they want to add to a Price Band, rather than all stock items being added.

Time Limited Price Lists

Price Bands can be created as Limited or Universal.

Limited Price Bands can be flagged as Active and/or have ‘From’ and ‘To’ dates assigned.

This is great for promotional pricing.

API

An API has been included to offer better flexibility for development and integration to Sage 200 Extra.

CRM

A New connector integrates Sage 200 with Sage CRM. This allows data to be input in ‘real time’ reducing the synchronisation requirements.

Importantly what this will also allow is for upgrades of 200 and CRM to be run separately. This should hopefully make the upgrade requirements easier and more affordable.

**As with all new releases compatibility has been removed with for older versions of related Operating systems and linked applications.

Yesterday finally saw the release of the much-anticipated Service Pack 2 for Sage 200 Extra 2015.

One of the key items as part of this is the support of Windows 10 operating system.

There are lots of fixes and some additions as detailed in this document released with the update –

Reports

There are some New Reports to be aware of which are not installed automatically as well as Layout updates too. Check these out with your BP. The introduction of the SOP Profitability reports which include Returns and Credit Notes will be music to some people’s ears, although if you needed this previously you have probably had the report written already.

There also some nice Stock reports, offering different views of Sales by Customer, Product Group and Monthly Sales etc.

Summary Screens

My particular favourite addition in this service pack is the added drill down functionality to the Summary screens. Previously a great visual aid (and Sage Sales Persons dream!) they were not altogether complete from a ‘day to day’ point of view. However we are now able to drill all the way down to the transactional items which makes them much more beneficial as an analysis tool.

Sales Summary Outstanding Debt (Totals)

Sales Summary Outstanding Debt (Drill down to Customers)

Sales Summary Outstanding Debt (Drill down to Transactions)

Installation

Service Pack 2 can be applied to sites running either the Base version of Sage 200 Extra 2015 (all SP1 updates are included) or sites with Sage 200 Extra 2015 Service Pack 1.

As with Service Pack 1 there are two installation files:

Sage200v2015SP2ClientPrerequisites.exe

Sage200v2015SP2.msp

On client machines, both files must be run in the order listed above.

Sage200v2015SP2ClientPrerequisites.exe checks the client files to ensure the correct registry keys are present on the machine.

Sage 200v2015SP2.msp updates Sage 200 Extra.

NB. On a server, you only need to install the Sage 200v2015SP2.msp file.

Business Partners should note the different method of installation on Clients.

This service pack contains two files:

Sage200v2015SP1ClientPrerequisites.exe

Sage200v2015SP1.msp

On a client PC both files must be run, in that order, to ensure the service pack installs correctly.

Sage200v2015SP1ClientPrerequisites.exe checks the client files and ensures that the correct registry keys are present on the client machines. Sage 200v2015SP1.msp updates Sage 200 Extra. Failure to run the files in this order will cause errors when you try to run Sage 200 Extra 2015.

When importing nominal ledger budgets, a ‘success’ message was displayed but the details were not imported.

6429

The Default Cost Centre drop-down list was not displayed on the Consolidation tab of the Nominal Ledger settings.

Desktop

6389

An ‘Unhandled Exception’ error message appears when trying to add a new feature in Menu Design mode.

6390

Updated the Workspace quick filters to display part searches. Previously, the filter would only search on the entire word (for example, typing AB would only find a customer with the name AB, it wouldn’t find Abbey etc).

6400

User preferences not retained when a user logs out of Sage 200.

6424

Adding reports to the Home Page Favourites now makes the report appear in the Summary screen.

6425

Creating a new folder in Home Page Favourites and adding the report generates an error.

6443

Error in Workspaces where the ‘OR’ filter did not work correctly. In previous versions the OR filter was working like an AND. As a result, no details were being returned by the filter.

There is a Known issue (5924) which is fixed in Service Pack 1 for Sage 200 2013 R2 where the details of held journals, which were created from Journal Templates, are lost if more than one journal has been held.

NB. there was a hotfix for this originally but this is now rolled up into SP1.

In the core Project Accounting module it is possible to create project Statuses and specify whether costs can be entered for a status.

When entering Timesheets in the standard system you are not able to select a project with a status that does not allow costs (as you would expect). However if entering timesheets via WTE, you are able to select a project even if it has a status that does not allow costs.

This was reported in 2011 SP5 originally, and is still not fixed within 2015.

Below is a list provided by Sage of the fixes included within Sage 200 2015.

System Administrator

5997 & 5998

We have improved the speed of the company database upgrade process.
This affects any database that:

uses Analysis codes

has large numbers of SOP, POP or Stock records, or

has large numbers of BOMs or BOM Lines.

6054

Users were unable to create the MMSUser account on Windows 2012 Essentials when it was integrated with Office 365.
Previously the user would see the error message:‘Cannot add login name_mmsuser to server password validation failed, the password does not meet the requirement of the password filter dll’.

Core 200

Nominal Ledger

1392

Tax type and tax code fields were not displayed on nominal journal templates.Previously, a user would have to set up the template and then enter these details once the template had been recalled prior to processing.

Stock Control

5093

Under certain circumstances, Amend Stock Item Product Group stopped working if outstanding works orders existed.
In some cases, an ‘out of memory’ error appeared.

5424

Removing large amounts of stock history records caused on ‘out of memory’ error.

Project Accounting

5476

Users saw the error message; ‘Failed to run SQL script SchemaMigration’ when accessing Project Accounting settings, using the View Project Accounting Settings screen or when saving a project.

5945

Bills were not generated as part of the Suggested Billing functionality. This issue affected some project item types of ‘stock item’, depending on how the item was set to allow costs and revenue.

Period End

5532

Users saw an exception error when trying to drill-down on a value on the Current Periods Totals screen within the VAT Analysis option.
This occurred for users who had previously migrated data from Sage 50 Accounts.

Purchase Order Processing

5541

In some circumstances, a unique reference number (URN) was used if a free text line was analysed to a project. This resulted in a URN that had no postings in the Nominal Ledger.

6053

Saving a record with a long description on the Confirm Goods Received screen generated a ‘Sage Data Access Error – Cannot set the value of the field’ error.

Sales Order Processing

6066

Users trying to print a quotation for quotations that had been entered via the CRM Form Launcher would see an error message ‘Value does not fall within the expected range’.

6239

Customers, using traceability, received an ‘Out of Memory’ error when processing large amounts of stock after the stock levels had been adjusted.

Sales Ledger

5666

Users saw Out of Memory errors or No Network Connection errors when performing consecutive transaction enquiries.

Nominal Ledger

5924

The details of a held journal were lost when creating another held journal from a template.

Bill of Materials

5767

Overtyping the stock code on Record Built Items could move a quantity into stock for an incorrect item.

5780

Users sometimes received an exception error in the following scenario:
Creating a purchase order within Trial Kitting when the supplier had exceeded their credit limit.

5904

The Reverse (BOM) Build process took a specific quantity of a finished item out of stock and added the stock back in to the components.

Manufacturing

Works Order Processing

4551

Traceable Enquiry functionality did not work after changing the product group on a stock item.

6122

Cost of sales postings were incorrect when components were issued to a works order which was completed before the components were invoiced.

6188

Traceable components were not discarded correctly if the build was cancelled on the Confirm batch/Serial Numbers for Components form.

Estimating

5393

Components held against operations were not converted when estimates were converted to a BOM.

Bill of Materials

6086

Cancelling a BOM build for batch/serial items did not allow any changes to the build, unless the screen was closed and reopened.

6096

The Build Session created a reserved temporary batch/serial number in BOM and an error message appeared, preventing the user from entering a value in the Quantity field.

6172

Cost of sales adjustment postings were sometimes posted to the wrong nominal ledger account when building through sub-assemblies.

Other

Process Maps

5564

Enquiry buttons within process maps were not working.

Workspaces

5601

An exception error occurred if the user opened multiple workspaces. We have reduced the amount of system memory required to open multiple workspaces.

Excel Integration

6004

Refreshing data within Excel Integration was not good. We have made performance improvements in this area.

I have come across a couple of issues relating to Emailing documents from Sage 200.

At one of my sites recently users were using had a mixture of Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013. I had configured all layouts for email set up to use MAPI as the Mail provider.

The first issue this brought up was for every email Sage tried to send, an Outlook security warning would pop up.

Outlook security message

This is not so bad for users if one or two emails are being sent, but imagine how this is for a batch of 100+ statements!

This issue is actually caused by a Microsoft Outlook update that is designed to prevent security breaches and is not a Sage problem. The update effectively removes the ‘Send e-mails automatically’ feature from within Format > E-mail and this can’t easily be corrected. For further information, refer to Microsoft article 262634 at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=262634

NB. In Outlook 2000 and 2003 the security update is installed separately, however it is built into Outlook 2007 and above. For Outlook 2013, there are Programmatic Access security settings which are generally controlled at a Group level. These should be enabled.

In Sage 200 2013 and above, this issue doesn’t occur if the report or layout has the Mail Provider set to Outlook instead of MAPI.

Having changed the Mail provider to Outlook on the layouts at my site, this identified another issue but this time for users of Outlook 2013. With the Mail Provider set as Outlook, when attempting to Email a document, a message appeared to advise that the Sage200Desktop.exe has stopped working.

Sage200Desktop.exe has stopped working error

The Problem Details section gives more information (???????):

Problem signature:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH

Application Name: Sage200Desktop.exe

Application Version: 17.300.14086.3

Application Timestamp: 5334325b

Fault Module Name: StackHash_17c0

Fault Module Version: 6.3.9600.17630

Fault Module Timestamp: 54b0d74f

Exception Code: c0000374

Exception Offset: PCH_0F_FROM_ntdll+0x0003CC2C OS

Version:6.3.9600.2.0.0.16.7

Locale ID:2057

Additional Information 1: 17c0

Additional Information 2: 17c083e57d5c8adee4818c4ba7d6ebbb

Additional Information 3: 643b

Additional Information 4: 643b2a225326ecea5e5cb96f62ab3b6e

Troubleshooting detected that although this issue occurs for Outlook 2013, it only occurs when using Windows 8/8.1 or Server 2012/2012R2. Windows 7 machines were fine.

This is a known issue with the Sage report designer (so impacts Sage 50 and payroll also). The problem I had for my site was the resolution is to switch the layout Mail Provider to MAPI……..!

NB. The Sage200Desktop.exe has stopped working error can also occur when the Mail Provider is MAPI and Outlook is closed when attempting to Email the document.

My options for this site were:

Solution 1
Upgrade all users to Outlook 2013 and set all layouts to use MAPI.